Welcome to the 14th community update, covering March 6th ~ 20th, 2009.

As always, there was no shortage of news in the past weeks. Distributions including Om2009, Android and Qt Extended Improved all received their share of updates. The first Openmoko Programming Competition, hosted by Aapo Rantalainen and Risto H. Kurppa, was announced and the winner will now get a prize provided by the community, currently at 314€ and a leather case for Freerunner (39€)! A week later, a second contest was announced by Rakshat Hooja, where the current bounty stands at 125€. Discussions continued on the subjects of cool chess games, browsers on the Neo, and of course, keyboards (we love our keyboards), and much more.

Period 6, Mar ~ 20, Mar, 2009

Distributions

Om2009 - Openmoko continues its work on the release plan. Members from Paroli, Distribution and FSO met in Chemnitz, Germany to further discuss their commitments to a future release.

It features a better installing system (untar the file on an empty sdcard partition and let your freerunner start from sdcard and wait).

Integrating Qi

Runs fully from NAND, no need for Sdcard anymore

Integrating Sean RILD, so it behaves as normal phone

Integrating many fixes (also community patches)

Koolu has also made a preview koolu-beta1-cupcake image. It has the cupcake features but isn't fully working momentarily, because Koolu is integrating a new code drop from Koolu and the patches from Michael.

Freelancer Michael Trimarchi has also built Android images, even Cupcake ones. His builds currently have the most features (suspend + sms + calls + GPRS + onscreen keyboard), like seen in functional tests. This features are beeing merged into koolu-beta1-cupcake for release soon.

Applications

New Applications

A package-browser which both creates a SQLite3-database with all packages from the OPKG-cache (enabling fast searches through packages < 1 sec) and is able to install and remove packages. You can also perform updates and upgrades through it.

Fennec Beta 1 Released its twelfth development milestone and the first beta release of the mobile version of Firefox, for testing purposes only. No version for Freerunner yet. More details about this on:

Orrery 2.5 A new version of the orrery sky-chart program has been released. In addition to several bug fixes, the new version includes support for displaying informal constellations (asterisms like the Big Dipper), a new to-scale display of the Solar System, information about the number of satellites used for the position fix in GPS mode and better support for displaying stars too faint for the unaided eye to see.

GTick is a metronome application written for GNU/Linux and other UN*X-like operting systems supporting different meters (Even 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and more) and speeds ranging from 10 to 1000 bpm. It utilizes GTK+ and OSS (ALSA compatible). It is part of the GNU Project.

Please test the package and leave some feedback (comment or GTick wikipage)

Community

Everyone can add test results of the browser compatibility to any of the distributions being used so that we may find the one that has the most potential and can be developed to an actual working browser.

If anyone is looking for a Chess game on the Neo, you could try Maemo. This might be a good start for the application:

Mid April: GSM buzz-fix party in Braunschweig, Germany Daniel Williams has been glad to perform buzz fixes for phones that needs the fix. In order to gauge interest and plan ahead with respect to ordering Resistors/Capacitors he would like to know how many phones would come. If you are interested and would show up please mail him privately and also give information on how many phones you would bring.

Also there is another Fix party in Barcelona organized by David Samblas from Tuxbrain. Visit this blog post for more information

Software.Cofundos.org - Following the programming contest, software.Cofundos.org will help to boost any idea one has in mind and give an opportunity to earn some money for people who have the time/skills you may not have.This is a great platform for discussing and enriching ideas on upcoming/existing projects. You can view only openmoko related projects at openmoko.cofundos.org. A feed for new projects from cofundos.org has been uploaded to Openmoko Planet. Tuxbrain has also started a cofundos.org campaign

Competitions

New application contest organized by Rakshat Hooja 'Call Recorder cum Dictaphone Application for the Freerunner' on cofundus.org. Any one who wishes to contribute their time/skills and also get more details can check the following link:

Welcome to the 14th community update, covering March 6th ~ 20th, 2009.

As always, there was no shortage of news in the past weeks. Distributions including Om2009, Android and Qt Extended Improved all received their share of updates. The first Openmoko Programming Competition, hosted by Aapo Rantalainen and Risto H. Kurppa, was announced and the winner will now get a prize provided by the community, currently at 314€ and a leather case for Freerunner (39€)! A week later, a second contest was announced by Rakshat Hooja, where the current bounty stands at 125€. Discussions continued on the subjects of cool chess games, browsers on the Neo, and of course, keyboards (we love our keyboards), and much more.

Period 6, Mar ~ 20, Mar, 2009

Distributions

Om2009 - Openmoko continues its work on the release plan. Members from Paroli, Distribution and FSO met in Chemnitz, Germany to further discuss their commitments to a future release.

It features a better installing system (untar the file on an empty sdcard partition and let your freerunner start from sdcard and wait).

Integrating Qi

Runs fully from NAND, no need for Sdcard anymore

Integrating Sean RILD, so it behaves as normal phone

Integrating many fixes (also community patches)

Koolu has also made a preview koolu-beta1-cupcake image. It has the cupcake features but isn't fully working momentarily, because Koolu is integrating a new code drop from Koolu and the patches from Michael.

Freelancer Michael Trimarchi has also built Android images, even Cupcake ones. His builds currently have the most features (suspend + sms + calls + GPRS + onscreen keyboard), like seen in functional tests. This features are beeing merged into koolu-beta1-cupcake for release soon.

Applications

New Applications

A package-browser which both creates a SQLite3-database with all packages from the OPKG-cache (enabling fast searches through packages < 1 sec) and is able to install and remove packages. You can also perform updates and upgrades through it.

Fennec Beta 1 Released its twelfth development milestone and the first beta release of the mobile version of Firefox, for testing purposes only. No version for Freerunner yet. More details about this on:

Orrery 2.5 A new version of the orrery sky-chart program has been released. In addition to several bug fixes, the new version includes support for displaying informal constellations (asterisms like the Big Dipper), a new to-scale display of the Solar System, information about the number of satellites used for the position fix in GPS mode and better support for displaying stars too faint for the unaided eye to see.

GTick is a metronome application written for GNU/Linux and other UN*X-like operting systems supporting different meters (Even 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and more) and speeds ranging from 10 to 1000 bpm. It utilizes GTK+ and OSS (ALSA compatible). It is part of the GNU Project.

Please test the package and leave some feedback (comment or GTick wikipage)

Community

Everyone can add test results of the browser compatibility to any of the distributions being used so that we may find the one that has the most potential and can be developed to an actual working browser.

If anyone is looking for a Chess game on the Neo, you could try Maemo. This might be a good start for the application:

Mid April: GSM buzz-fix party in Braunschweig, Germany Daniel Williams has been glad to perform buzz fixes for phones that needs the fix. In order to gauge interest and plan ahead with respect to ordering Resistors/Capacitors he would like to know how many phones would come. If you are interested and would show up please mail him privately and also give information on how many phones you would bring.

Also there is another Fix party in Barcelona organized by David Samblas from Tuxbrain. Visit this blog post for more information

Software.Cofundos.org - Following the programming contest, software.Cofundos.org will help to boost any idea one has in mind and give an opportunity to earn some money for people who have the time/skills you may not have.This is a great platform for discussing and enriching ideas on upcoming/existing projects. You can view only openmoko related projects at openmoko.cofundos.org. A feed for new projects from cofundos.org has been uploaded to Openmoko Planet. Tuxbrain has also started a cofundos.org campaign

Competitions

New application contest organized by Rakshat Hooja 'Call Recorder cum Dictaphone Application for the Freerunner' on cofundus.org. Any one who wishes to contribute their time/skills and also get more details can check the following link: